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Direct Mail: Still badly targeted says Informatica
DIRTY DATA RESPONSIBLE FOR OBESE POSTBOXES
Informatica study on direct mail shows that less than one in ten mailers are relevant to recipients, while 47 per cent is addressed incorrectly
Maidenhead - 7 December, 2006 - A new study by Informatica Corporation (NASDAQ: INFA), has drawn attention to the growing problem of inaccurate data being used in direct marketing across the UK. While businesses are making great strides in improving data quality, a worrying 47 percent of respondents said that more than half the direct mail they received wasn't correctly addressed, with 68 percent saying that less than one in ten mailers was actually relevant to them.
Unqualified data causes incorrectly-addressed envelopes, untargeted direct mail and creates unnecessary waste. Local councils are already buckling under the amount of waste caused by unaddressed junk mail (78,000 tonnes per year), and this study shows that poor data quality and the amount of incorrectly targeted direct mail is adding to the problem.
Informatica's study of UK adults found that:
• over 40 percent of respondents received more than five direct mail pieces every week
• 25 per cent of people indicated that less than one per cent of the marketing mail was relevant to them
• 47 per cent said that more than half the mail they received was incorrectly addressed - either addressed to the wrong home owner, or addressed inaccurately
The findings show there is an urgent need for businesses to address data quality to ensure consumer confidence.
"Dirty data is a huge problem for the UK's direct marketing industry and data quality has to be paramount," said Tom Golden, VP Marketing, Informatica Data Quality Division. "Companies, at the very least, need to get name and address details correct or potentially alienate consumers, flying in the face of their objective to attract people to their brand. What's worse for companies is that inaccurate data produces irrelevant mail that winds up straight in the bin, and equates to an immediate loss of a much-needed marketing budget."
Tony Lamb, Chair of the Direct Marketing Association's (DMA) Data Council echoes Golden's concerns: "Direct Marketing for too long has been based on a 1-3 percent conversion rate. The marketing world is now changing, and this is being driven by the consumer's expectations. With the internet providing access to immediate information, and consumers becoming more familiar with sophisticated promotional activity, the times when a company could get away with poor addressing are numbered. Highly targeted campaigns using accurate data are now achieving 70 percent conversion rates, and it's here the consumer's money is being spent."
Informatica's survey, carried out on Tuesday, 14 November, was comprised of 341 people on a busy central London shopping street. The company sought to explore the extent of the problem when organisations do not focus on data quality and use inaccurate, or dirty, data to target customers through marketing collateral.
To highlight the growing problem within British businesses, Informatica also polled delegates at a recent user group roadshow to ascertain their data problems. 97 percent said that their data quality systems were "ill". The survey, of IT directors within large UK enterprises, found that 16 percent of companies said that one of the symptoms of poor data quality is "ineffective campaigns and/or customer segmentation". In addition, 38 per cent of those questioned said their business is either "chronically ill" or shows "some serious symptoms" of having poor data quality.
"The message is simple - clean your data, or risk putting off the very customers you're trying to target," added Golden. "It is depressing to think of how much unopened direct mail is clogging our nation's landfills."
07 December 2006